Seven

They left two days later, early in the morning, once Madoc had gotten a chance to sleep and they’d both been able to make inquiries in town about the “beggar.” Surprising neither of them, they got few answers. One man, who sold chickens close to the tavern, said that he’d found a robe wadded up and shoved under his stall. By the time he spoke to Madoc and Moiread, he’d long since sold it to the ragman.

“But we can assume,” Madoc said, “that they or their master are magicians.”

Moiread blinked. “Can we?”

They traveled a main road now, wider than those that had taken them from Loch Arach, and so as they talked, they both kept an eye out for anybody who might overhear. Just then, they were the sole travelers in sight, but they kept their voices low in case—as much as that was possible when talking on horseback.

“The beggar was only present the one night. He had the poison ready, and he didn’t act long after we came in.” Madoc reined his horse right at a fork in the road, then went on. “Now, I suppose he may have been watching all the taverns, in various guises, but that doesn’t seem likely. Nor do I think that my enemies had a man at each inn: a rather frightening prospect, if the case.”

“Aye.”

“So then. Either the man knew well in advance where we’d be and when, or he’d followed us from Loch Arach to Erskine without either of us sensing him. I won’t say I’m such a woodsman as to make that impossible, but between the two of us, I would believe we’d have spotted any man without unearthly assistance.”

“I like to think so,” said Moiread dryly. She stared off into the hazy blue sky, thinking while she enjoyed the sun on her face and the fact that the world stayed steady and real in front of her. Few things beat illness for bringing life into focus, though she’d not advise belladonna as an experience.

“We can tell the future a bit,” she finally said, “but only in the castle, in that room you saw, and then it’s weather or land or illness. Large things, and not with their own will. To foretell the actions of two people…I’ve never heard of that done.”

Madoc nodded. Riding in the sunlight, with the wind ruffling his short black hair, he did a fair impression of a hero in a tapestry, or mayhap a saint on a stained-glass window. His face had that sharp ascetic’s appearance, particularly when he frowned in thought. “With people, the future is never certain, or so my few studies in the area have taught me. You can find a likely moment at best, and the more specific, the more likely it is to go wrong. Our enemies may have taken that chance. Or”—he looked around them, then over his shoulder—“they may have trusted in human eyes, only hidden them from us.”

“If they’d entered the castle so, we’d have known it. But they may have suspected as much. There are stories.”

“I know.” Madoc smiled quickly. “One day at our leisure, perhaps you’ll tell me which among them are true.”

“A few more days like these, and I’ll have nothing left to tell you,” said Moiread, laughing. Then, reluctantly, she turned back to serious matters. “They’d have waited outside the castle, then, until we left. Could be done. And I could almost pity the poor bastards doing it, had they been on a less murderous errand.”

“I have heard of such enchantments,” Madoc said, “though I know no spell to counter them.”

“I might be able to see the magic, if not the men. But I can’t manage it through the illusion”—Moiread gestured to her artificially flat chest—“nor can I do it on horseback. And meanwhile I’ll be no good in a fight.”

“Could you teach me the way of it?” Madoc asked.

“Aye, I think so. Or at least I know no reason why you couldn’t learn it, save that I’ve never taught anyone magic before, and I doubt I’ll do it well. It’s a spell, though, not a gift of my blood, so any man could try.”

“You could do it when we stop for a meal, if there’s nobody else around us. Until then, I’d lay odds we’ll be safe. The man behind all this may know by now that I live, and he may have set men on our trail again, but it must take them some time to catch up. Unless they had a band waiting in Erskine.”

“Or he truly can see the future and set wee clumps of assassins all along our path. Although then he’d have seen in advance that the first one wouldn’t work, and why bother with him then?” Moiread shook her head. She was glad for many reasons that seeing the future didn’t often work. Not least of those was that trying to reason it out gave her a headache.

“And my thought is that they’d have tried to strike by now in the first case, and it will hardly matter in the second. Indeed, if my foe is a man powerful enough to see so far and so finely into the future, and wealthy enough to hire many killers, it says that my quest is either hopeless or very important indeed.”

“Nothing says it can’t be both, you know,” said Moiread.

“I do.” Madoc looked off into the distance, watching the gray-green hills on the horizon. The metal of his mail shirt and the hilt of his sword glinted as he rode. His tunic was red as garnets or heart’s blood, and he sat his horse with gracious ease, though they’d been many hours in the saddle already. Quietly, he said, “I had believed that if I went without a troop of men or much state, I would pass unnoticed, or no man would know my task well enough to want it stopped. I had hoped.”

“Aye,” said Moiread. She recognized the tone of his voice. She’d heard it from her father, those few times when his plans had been baffled, and from her captains after ambushes gone awry. She’d used it herself often in the long months between Falkirk and Bannockburn. “And now—”

“Now I have all the more reason not to turn away,” Madoc said. “But if you say I’ve dragged you into danger unwarned, I’ll not blame you.”

“I agreed to guard you, and I assumed those I was to guard you from had a bit of skill at their craft. And I’ve spent a year or twenty at war, aye, and risking my neck more than I’ve done as yet.”

Madoc smiled. “Then I thank you again, and I promise I’ll be as apt a student as I can.”

* * *

“You’ll only have to do this the first time,” Moiread said. She sat tailor-fashion on a flattish stone. The brook at her side rushed loudly, swollen with the spring rains. “After, it’ll just be a matter of saying the words. It’s a compact you’re making, like most spells, though I’ve not heard of anything coming in person to agree. Too minor.”

“It’s rare that they do,” Madoc agreed, “or at least rare that they show themselves for it.”

Magic, or most magic, was a matter of talking directly to the forces of the world: the spirits of those forces in the oldest tales, the demons or angels governing their spheres in more modern lore. All spells invoked, most indirectly. Madoc had never been present for an actual summoning. When he was thinking sensibly, he was glad of that. Everything he’d learned said that even the holy ones would frighten the bravest man.

“Good,” said Moiread, evidently sharing his thoughts. “Here.”

She held out a twig of yew, dark needles and bright-red berries attached. In the last village they’d passed through, Moiread had taken them by a churchyard and stopped long enough to break the twig off the tree, which, as in many villages, grew by the gate.

“Now,” she went on, when Madoc had taken the twig, “hold it up and repeat after me.”

Slowly Moiread began, in Latin as good as any priest’s. “In the names of Gabriel, Amariel, Nargeron, and Almighty God, I call upon you, O powers of the worlds. I invoke you, and by invoking, I command you to grant me sight of the union of the spheres. Part the veil that blinds mortal eyes and give me to see the subtle workings of the world, now and whensoever I should invoke it again.”

As Madoc followed her lead, he felt power gathering. It wasn’t much—as Moiread had said, this was a minor spell—but the earth and the air both shifted, as if he could feel them being drawn slightly toward the yew twig. The twig itself began to feel both heavier and less present. Madoc was half worried that his fingers would go through it. In the sun at midday, it was hard to see, but he also thought it glowed.

Moiread nodded. “Now crush the berries. Close your eyes, and smear them on your lids.”

The sliminess Madoc had expected lasted barely a moment. Then it turned to a cool tingling across his closed eyelids and, in another heartbeat, vanished. His skin felt untouched.

“And open.”

Madoc did, and caught his breath. He was no stranger to magic, but never had he been able to see the whole world through such entirely different eyes.

A faint haze hung above the grass and trees, a paler shadow of their natural green. The rocks and road looked normal, though their colors were deeper than they had been a moment ago. Madoc looked to the horses, peacefully cropping new grass a few feet away, and saw that each of them glowed a shade of brown: the steady darkness of wheat bread for Moiread’s horse and a slightly lighter color for Rhuddem.

Madoc raised a hand in front of his face. His fingers shone red, shot through with streaks of silver. He flexed them, and the colors shifted accordingly.

“By God,” he said. “This is truly a lovely art you’ve shown me.”

“Useful, at times. But aye,” Moiread said admittedly, “rather beautiful too, in its way.”

She was beautiful. The spell stripped her of her illusion. Her hair lengthened slightly, her figure swelled and narrowed, and her face became a shade more delicate, so that a young-looking woman in men’s clothing sat facing him. In the world of the spell, a pattern of dancing lights played across her body, like diamonds set onto the crisp blue that washed over her skin.

In this world, her shadow was nothing remotely human. Two vast wings stretched out behind her, the brook running through their shade. When she tilted her head to watch him, the shape of an immense head, on a serpentine neck, separated itself from the larger shadow and turned toward Madoc. The same pattern of lights glittered in the shadow.

Mayhap it would have been sensible for Madoc to fear her then, but he wished only that he had more time to sit and watch her.

“A bit revealing, aye?” Moiread asked, clearly aware of where he was looking. To his relief, she sounded amused. “That is why we don’t generally teach the spell. We didn’t come up with it, but we’ve enough luck that not many know it.”

“Do you care so greatly for concealment?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “It’s no great peril, in my view of things, to be found out. There are already those who know what we are and speak of it with varying degrees of truth. Once more knew, or we were more willing to admit it, or both.”

“What happened?”

“To us? Time and duty. The world gets fuller. A clan turns from hunting to farming, and it’s no’ such great use for its laird to spend his days flying in dragon shape. Less use still in court, and we must go there to be part of the greater world, to lead a clan rather than a tribe in a cave. Our sires have other duties, and we as well. Our foes have magic of their own. Dragon shape is no sure victory.”

“I have heard that,” said Madoc, “and seen a little too. Only ran into one sorcerer myself.”

“We’ve not fought them often, no’ directly. The English magic turns more toward enchanted weapons”—she rubbed her calf, wincing in memory—“or strengthening castles. Crafty spells.”

“Like the one I’m doing?” Madoc asked, speaking the words that courtesy would have Moiread avoid.

“No shame in taking a weapon from your foe,” said Moiread. “We may have fought the people we learned this from”—she gestured around her, indicating the world revealed—“or we may fight them in the years to come. I’m still glad to have it.”

“So am I.”